"...[Hillary's] Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin, has three family members - her late father, her mother and her brother - connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations. Her position provides her with routine access to the Secretary and to policy-making.

* * *

"The concerns about the foreign influence of immediate family members is such a concern to the U.S. Government that it includes these factors as potentially disqualifying condition for obtaining a security clearance, which undoubtedly Ms. Abedin has had to obtain to function in her position....

.... Given the reasonable assumption that Ms. Abedin has a high-level security clearance, as a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence I am particularly interested in exactly how, given what we know from the international media about Ms. Abedin's documented family connects with the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, she was able to avoid being disqualified for a security clearance...."

With the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt at the center of "negotiations" between the Hamas and Israel, one has to wonder anew about Huma's familial connections to the terrorist group that gave birth to Hamas.

Yesterday, Morsi predicted a ceasefire "within hours," but then today Islamic Jihad bombed a bus full of Israelis in Tel Aviv. Not good for "negotiations."

Hillary has now arrived in Cairo and will meet with Morsi. Meanwhile, she has said the U.S. "strongly condemns" the bus bombing. She even used the T-word!

'Egypt of today is entirely different from the Egypt of yesterday, and the Arabs of today are not the Arabs of yesterday." So said Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi after Friday prayers last week, adding: "We will not leave Gaza alone."

And Gaza will not leave Mr. Morsi alone. As in decades past, Egypt is playing mediator between the Palestinians and Israel—but Mr. Morsi finds himself in a more precarious position than his predecessors. He has been involved in a delicate balancing act since his election in June, mindful of his indebtedness to the Hamas-allied Muslim Brotherhood that brought him to power and of his need not to alienate his foreign-aid benefactors in Washington....

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in Cairo, July 26.

"... the U.S. Congress ... is considering a bill to give Egypt $450 million in emergency aid — even as the Egyptian government clearly sides with Hamas in its current conflict with Israel." (Politico, 3 days ago).

This enlightening bit addresses the background of Huma Abedin, American Deputy Chief of Staff and aide to Secretary of State Clinton:

[It's been stated that] ... Ms. Abedin "has three family members — her late father, her mother and her brother — connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations." It turns out, however, that Huma Abedin herself is directly connected to Abdullah Omar Naseef, a major Muslim Brotherhood figure involved in the financing of al-Qaeda.

Ms. Abedin worked for a number of years at the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs as assistant editor of its journal. The Institute was founded by Naseef, who remained active in it for decades, overlapping for at least seven years with Ms. Abedin.

Naseef was also secretary general of the Muslim World League in Saudi Arabia, perhaps the most significant Muslim Brotherhood organization in the world. Under the auspices of the Muslim World League, he founded the Rabita Trust, which is formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization under American law due to its support of al-Qaeda.

That is to say: Before you even start probing the extensive, alarming Brotherhood ties of her family members, Huma Abedin could easily have been disqualified from any significant government position requiring a high security clearance based on her own personal and longstanding connection to Naseef.

A little more background: At the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, Ms. Abedin was assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. The journal was the Institute's main product. It promotes the fundamentalist version of sharia championed by the Muslim Brotherhood, by Abdullah Omar Naseef, and by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi. Ms. Abedin was assistant editor from 1996 through 2008 — from the time she began working as an intern in the Clinton White House, until the time shortly before she took her current position as Secretary Clinton's deputy chief of staff....

Comments

With every passing day, the convoluted machinations of the Obama administration become -- if such a thing is possible -- more incomprehensibe, more unintelligible, more impenetrable. I suspect that if such towering geniuses as Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein worked together to answer the queston "How did a shady character like Huma ever wind up as deputy chief of staff to the Secrtary of State?" they'd have no more success than in answering the question "What really happened in Benghazi and why?" These questions are so arcane, so unfathomable, I'm beginning to think we'll never get the answers. Maybe, however, someone out there can answer what seems to be a much simpler question: "What in the hell is Hillary doing in either Israel or Egypt?" If Obama meant what he said when he told the world that Israel has every right to defend itself, then why isn't Hillary back in Washington minding her own business? Why isn't the administration leaving Israel alone to do whatever it damn well pleases in its own defense? Why the meddling and obtruding and kibitzing in a matter that the Israelis are perfectly capable of handling on their own? If the Israelis have a right to defend themselves, then -- for crying out loud -- let them defend themselves. Must everything Barack Obama touches turn into a riddle inside a puzzle inside a conundrum?